IBM Collaborates with EdTech Startups to Upskill and Reskill Developer Community

IBM enhanced partnerships with edTech start-ups to provide the much-needed supplement to formal university curriculum by providing immersive curriculum on cutting- edge IBM technologies such as Data Science Experience (DSX), Watson IOT, Cloud, AI, Analytics via a choice of media viz online, internships, and technology hackathons. While the bulk of the learners would understandably be from the student community of engineering colleges and B-schools, there are also the individual learners and enterprise developers who benefit from the programs offered by the pool of partners, as they upskill themselves.

IBM, continuing with its commitment to embrace the ecosystem is working with these EdTech partners who are mostly startups. These partnerships bring in a level of engagement that is culturally and pedagogically in tune with the new age developer community that it sets out to serve.

Jigsaw Academy is a mature edTech Startup and a leader in Analytics and Data Science training in India. Analytics India rates Jigsaw as the #1 Analytics Training Institute in India. Jigsaw’s offering is predominantly digital, and they offer both B2C and B2B models and have a strong collaboration with University of Chicago and SDA Bocconi, Milan for their data science and Machine Learning courses. Their curriculum that is standardized on IBM technologies especially DSX benefits both independent learners and enterprise developers in India. They have several corporate clients across industries and sometimes augment digital learning with a customized F2F session as well. They have taught 50K+ students since inception.

Global Knowledge is an edTech Startup and MOOCs player providing online courses in IBM Cloud Application Development and IBM Watson Application Development with a specific intent of preparing the learner students, startups and professionals from corporate, to undertake the associated professional certification exams of IBM. They are the only provider of such curriculum globally.

KRACKIN Technologies is an edTech Startup, focused on improving the Industry readiness of College Students across India, in active collaboration with Industry Leaders. KRACKIN augments the existing academic curriculum with an Industry-endorsed structured learning program, in-line with the evolving industry demand, which is administered through a mobile-enabled digital platform. The KRACKIN learning platform helps IBM execute structured, personalized learning experiences for students across the country tracking their progress and evaluating adoption across a wide demography. The platform helps students discover and enroll in IBM-Powered Programs that educates them on cutting edge technologies like AI and Cloud technologies, and in the process increases awareness of IBM tools and solutions. The KRACKIN platform also brings together Students, Professors, IBM and potential employers onto a common social platform wherein students trained on IBM technologies are exposed to suitable recruitment opportunities across the country. The platform also provides each student with an employability score based on a holistic measurement, using IBM technologies, that allows the platform to double up as an innovative talent acquisition engine.

Imarticus Learning, an edTech Startup is a leading education company building skills through its Financial Services and Analytics programs anchored on BDA, ML, DL and AI. The Imarticus curriculum draws on its deep domain expertise and the experience of its members on its advisory board from the Corporate world and its experiential learning is based on the IBM Cloud platform. The target audience spans the spectrum of developers from students through startups and even professionals from the corporate world. A very real outcome is the near total talent acquisition of its students by its network of over 300 companies.

Eduvance, is an edTech Startup focusing on IoT in the context of AI, ML and DL. They are a team of electronics hardware experts who specialize in embedded systems and hardware IoT. Eduvance is a university program partner of semiconductor tech giants ARM, Microchip and Cypress Semiconductors. Eduvance sets up IoT labs in colleges across India that are based on real-world applications, leveraging the IBM Cloud platform with the it’s cognitive Watson capability, thus making these IoT labs a state of the art center for students to get skilled and become employable.

SmartBridge Educational Services is an edTech Startup, with Internet of Things (IoT) as its specialized domain. Their outcome-based experimental learning programs on IoT, Cloud Computing, ML, DL and AI are building skilled, entry-level engineers, for the corporate world. The community model of SmartBridge called IoTMakers (iotmakers.org), ignites innovation in student communities through technology hackathons. The real strength of SmartBridge is the network of more than 10,000 students and their continuous engagement through tech events & trainings.

GradValley Data Science, an edTech Startup, builds skills in a key area of Big Data Analytics & AI with a focus on non-metro geos that has a very knowledge and skills hungry human capital. And their methodology of education and entrepreneurship compliments IBM’s engagement with the developer ecosystem. They build their own curriculum teaming with IBM, drawing from the digital assets of IBM and providing the experiential learning component on IBM Cloud and Cognitive platforms. This drives adoption of IBM tech stack even as it produces expert skills in analytics and data science.

iAcademia is an edTech Startup that is focused on providing experiential learning through student internships in a blended mode of classroom and remote mentoring. The whole internship project work is on the IBM Cloud with an exposure to the various services available therein like Blockchain and IoT. These short-term and long-term internships fill a gap that exists in academia today whereby students can easily fulfill the mandate of an internship that they would otherwise give up on, given its hard to come by nature.

ICT Academy, APITA and TASK are government agencies that have partnered with IBM in the cause of the student developer. They deliver Cloud Application Development and Watson Application Development certification programs to member colleges of their respective regions training the faculty and students with hands on experience of the same on the IBM Cloud platform.